1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to paintball guns and, more particularly, to a paintball gun incorporating therein a pressure regulator. Since the paintball gun of the present invention dispenses with the use of any external air duct, it poses no risk of duct burst and is extremely safe in operation.
2. Description of Related Art
Paintball survival games have long been a form of popular leisure activity in western society, and are now becoming more and more prevalent in Taiwan. In the games, paintball guns and paintballs are used as weapons for shooting hypothetical enemies. For facilitating percussion, a paintball gun is typically equipped with a gas cylinder filled with pressurized air as its power source to rapidly and continuously shoot out paintballs.
Conventionally, a regulator is provided between the gas cylinder and an air reservoir in the paintball gun for regulating the flow of the pressurized air running from the gas cylinder into the air reservoir so as to control inlet-air pressure. Referring to FIG. 5, a traditional paintball gun comprises a barrel A including the air reservoir A1 that has a threaded open end A2 for the regulator B to be attached thereto. Besides, the gas cylinder C connected with the lower side of the barrel A has an air duct D for introducing pressurized air into the barrel. The regulator B provides a bent portion to retain one end of the air duct D by means of clamping.
Some defects of the traditional paintball gun have been recognized.
Firstly, the air duct connected between the regulator and the gas cylinder has to be manufactured and assembled very precisely in terms of dimensions or else duct burst tends to happen at joints between the air duct and the regulator as well as the gas cylinder, endangering users.
Furthermore, in order to prevent duct burst that can seriously injure users, connection and fixation parts used at the joints have to be very precise, thus incurring high manufacturing costs.
At last, since the regulator is attached to the open end of the air reservoir, both the regulator and the air duct are exposed from the barrel, which is dangerous because a plethora of parts put together tend to get loosened when inadvertently colliding with each other.